


Time be damned

by redshineJasper (MrsPummeluff)



Series: Stucky OneShots [13]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Doctor Strange (2016), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Bucky Barnes, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes is Not the Winter Soldier, Captain America: The First Avenger, F/M, First Kiss, Fix-It, M/M, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, mentions of canon character deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-15 17:04:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15417561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsPummeluff/pseuds/redshineJasper
Summary: He comes from the future he says.He hands them a set of coordinates. Tells them to meet him there at the time on the bottom of the page.He makes them promise they won’t tell Captain Rogers a word.





	Time be damned

He comes from the future he says.

It’s the only thing he tells Howard and Peggy when he stands in front of them in Howard’s laboratory. He wants to talk to them about Steve and their future. When they don’t believe him, he tells them, that there are very many types of fondue in the future.

It would have made Peggy blush if she was like that but she composes herself and looks at the man.

He wears a weird beard and has dark hair. His clothes are strange and nothing any of them has ever seen before.

He floats when the long red cape behind him blows in a non-existent breeze.

He hands them a set of coordinates. Tells them to meet him there at the time on the bottom of the page.

He makes them promise they won’t tell Captain Rogers, Sargent Barnes or any other soul a word. This was a secret just for the two of them. Peggy is still not sure if she trusts him, but the comment about the fondue gives him the benefit of the doubt. Steve would have never revealed it if he wouldn’t trust this man. And no one but her, Steve and Howard knew about that story anyways.

A few weeks later, the Howling Commandos come back from a mission, bringing in Doctor Armin Zola. Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes are absent. Falsworth tells the two of them what happened. A few hours later, Peggy finds Steve in a bombed-out bar in the next town here in south France.

Two days before the meeting Steve dives his plane into the ice. Howard wants to keep looking for his friend, contemplates not going, but Peggy drags him along. The man was from the future after all. He would know what just happened. That’s her reasoning and Howard thinks she is right.

They make their way to the coordinates on the paper.

The man and three other people wait for them, in the outskirts of London. They are waiting in front of a warehouse.

“These are my… colleagues.” He points at a robot in red and gold; a woman, almost naked, in skin-tight black leather with fiery red hair and a man, blonde in black and purple, bow and arrows on his back.

The man makes them follow. He is walking this time and makes a few complicated gestures, glowing symbols appearing in the air. Peggy pegs him for a wizard. She feels a headache coming on. The future seems to be full of strange people, if that really is where they are coming from.

“Where are we going?” Howard asks and the robot turns around. Its face opens to reveal a man. It’s a helmet; a suit. He looks a lot like Howard, Peggy thinks but keeps it to herself.

“We help you change history for the better.” He replies curtly and turns back.

“Then why did I have to come? Not the Commandos or someone?” Howard asks, slightly annoyed.

The glowing in the air opens a door in front of them and they enter a room. It is like standing in Stark Expo, surrounded by technology that no one could believe to be real before seeing it with their own eyes, and apparently, everything worked.

“Because you are one of the few people who could appreciate my genius.” The armored man mutters smugly as he sees Howard looking around in awe. Peggy meanwhile is still skeptical towards them.

In the middle of the room is a big, white coffin-like box. When Peggy gets closer she gasps, turns around and glaring at the strange people from the future.

“What have you done to him?” she snaps. She knew about the place this man held in Steve’s big heart. She would gladly have shared Steve with Barnes, if it meant making Steve happy. After all they were the only two people to see the heart under the muscle.

“We have done nothing. He fell from the train as you know.” The wizard begins. “When he had been taken prisoner in Azzano, he had been experimented on, much like the Captain had been, only it hadn’t been his own choice.”

The woman takes over, motioning Peggy closer to the coffin.

“He survived the fall thanks to the faulty serum Armin Zola had given him.”

“In a future where we’re from, he becomes the greatest assassin of all times, controlled by the Russians and later a new generation of HYDRA.” The archer adds and Peggy stares at him.

“He killed you later. He didn’t know any better. He was brainwashed and tortured.” The armored man says, looking at Howard.

“We went to get him, after his fall but we can change history only so much. There are rules.” The magician continues calmly. “He lost his arm, we gave him a new one. You will not be able to get back into this room again when we leave. You cannot access this technology before it is time.”

“You do needed to know how grave the situation is. Keep a close eye on Zola, or HYDRA will grow a head again, where Steve just cut it off.” The woman says and Steve’s name rolls easy from her tongue as if it’s one of the most normal things in the world. Peggy doesn’t know what makes her trust these people now. But maybe it’s the way she hears the woman talk about Steve and sees the obvious affection and how the woman’s glance always lingers on Barnes’s coffin for a second, protective and caring.

“Is Steve alive as well?” Peggy asks, because she always had the suspicion that Steve wouldn’t die easy and if Barnes was alive after getting a faulty serum and falling off the train, Steve could be alive as well?

“You know he can’t refuse when the world is calling for help. But I advise you against waiting for him. Live a happy life like he will always want it for you and shape the world to make him proud. For now he is dead and will be for a long time.”

“Do not look for him. He will be found when the time is come.” The wizard says, when dust whirls up in the room and something resembling a portal appears.

Peggy turns to the woman, because she knows time will be up soon.

“Why did you tell and show us all that? Why not just change it and go back?”

“It was their wish. They wanted you both to know that the future will be alright.” She shrugs smiling. “And you asked me to make them happy. No matter the cost. It was your choice. Strange probably has his own reasons, but he rarely reveals them.”

Peggy nods. Changing the past sounds like something she could consider one day, if it meant, seeing Steve happy for once.

The portal begins to glow green. Peggy and Howard take a step back and Peggy realizes it is time for Howard and her to leave. The red-haired woman smiles and makes a dismissive gesture at them and Peggy drags Howard out of the room.

When the door falls closed behind them and they turn around to look at it, the door is gone.

* * *

 

_(Inside, Clint looks at Tony._

_“Who will kill him now?”_

_“A Black Widow. The red room starts earlier because they don’t have a subject for Project Winter Soldier.”  Tony looks through the files on his phones. “It says,_ Natasha _killed her in Odessa.”_

_“I’ll probably remember that encounter when we’re back in our time. Come on, boys. We got a wedding to attend.”_

_“So all Winter Soldier kills were now made by Widows?” Clint clarifies when Natasha had left through the portal. Tony nods solemnly._

_“History won’t change much. Most events will happen, no matter how much you try to stop them from happening. But you can tweak things a_ little, _if you are careful.” Strange says, then motions Tony and Clint back towards their new, altered timeline. Natasha was right. They got to attend the Rogers-Barnes wedding. And even time-travelers could be late.)_

* * *

 

When they round the warehouse later in the light of day, the room doesn’t exist.

And Peggy is fine with it…

… after a while. She pulls herself together and when she meets her future husband (not that she knows that at the time), she begins to fall in love again. After all, she sometimes needs to tell herself, time-travelers know what they are doing, right? And in her heart she knows that she’d see them together again, one day. James Barnes and Steve Rogers as the pair they are.

Some days were hard. Full of the thoughts of Steve somewhere frozen, asleep and not knowing that Bucky is alive, not being assured everything will be fine like she was after his death.

Yes, some days it hurts, but most days, she is fine. And some days, she even tells her daughter Stephanie Jamie stories about how brave her uncles were, sacrificing themselves, that they could live this happy live they have.

“You are named after two of the bravest men I knew.” She sometimes says to her and then louder, that her husband in the kitchen will hear, “except for your father, of course.” And he will chuckle but admit every time that he maybe never will be as brave as Captain America and his trusty Partner, Sargent Barnes. But that is fine because in the end it was Captain Rogers who pulled him out of Azzano and gave him the chance to meet Peggy Carter. No hard feelings about an ex in his book.

And even if Peggy stands there in 1944, frustrated, with no plan and only a shadow of knowledge of what the future will hold, wishing they would have brought Steve back to her, deep inside she knows, the future will be fine.

Captain America would come back when earth needs him most. And for now it is her place to make sure he will have allies when the time comes.

**~ 68 years later ~**

Steve wakes up, eyes focusing on the white ceiling over him. Next to him someone clears their throat.

“Awake at last?”

He sits up straight and looks to the side.

“Is this heaven?”

The clear laugh fills his chest with warmth.

“If this would be heaven, I wouldn’t be here, that’s for sure. But it’s not the forties either, pal. We’ve missed almost seventy years. At least that’s what Howard’s kid and Peggy’ve been tellin’ me when they woke me up.”

“Woke you up? Howard’s what?” Steve turns completely, legs dangling over the side of the bed and he looks straight into clear blue eyes. Bucky does not look a day older than when he fell, but Steve notices the arm that doesn’t add up with his memories.

“I remember falling. Then I woke up. There was this man, he says his name is Tony Stark and he is from the future. He’s telling me I lost my arm during the fall and he just makes sure I will have one when I wake up. I’ve asked about you and he shushed me and told me to sleep, they will wake me, when you’re back. And they did. They told me it took you almost seventy years to come back from your mission. So I’ve been asleep for a while as well.”

That wasn’t everything that they told him, but some of it he rather keeps to himself for now. After all Steve had just woken up and always been a bit slow on the uptake in the morning. Bucky shifts from the chair onto the bed, next to Steve. Pulls him into his side and gives him a smirk.

“I told you, we were going to the future. Just a bit further than we thought.” He says chuckling and Steve doesn’t care in that moment. He surges forward and presses his lips against Bucky’s because a week ago he saw Bucky fall from a train and just hours ago steered his plane into the freezing cold water of the Arctic, ready to die to save the world.

And maybe he had been ready to die to be reunited with Bucky. Because that was what his whole transformation into Captain America had always been about to Steve. If this was real, he was quite happy not to be dead. So the future can wait, he thinks, when Bucky’s lips move against his. What’s important is that they are here together now, time be damned.

**Author's Note:**

> Great great thanks to my amazing beta, who does an amazing Job, okay. [HERE](http://rachelladytietjens.tumblr.com/) is her tumblr  
> And here you can find me on [tumblr](http://fangirl-faye.tumblr.com) and talk to me :D


End file.
